


The Offer

by teganandsarasince2004



Category: Tegan and Sara (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 09:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15530925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teganandsarasince2004/pseuds/teganandsarasince2004
Summary: Her family's fortune gone. Her money gone because of her own bad investment decisions. Her twin sister in a spiraling depression. Tegan makes a fateful decision one night and is greeted by an unusual woman.





	The Offer

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this oneshot of mine!

The Offer

The sun has already dipped below the horizon as wind and snow pelts the windows of a quaint, old shop. Candles light the shop up just enough to show the well-maintained furniture, curios of all types, and the odd bauble here and there. Enough so that I must blink my eyes several times as the dealer comes up to me with a trinket in his twisted, arthritic hand.

“Sometimes it can be good; sometimes it is just ordinary; but more often than not it is bad. This, however, is something I acquired several years ago,” The old man's voice is rough with age and of cigarette smoke. “Some customers are ignorant of what they have. When I acquire something I deem quite valuable, I loathe to sell it. Further than that consider yourself lucky; that in any other disposition, you'd be in the snow if'n you asked to look at such.”

Blinking again to adjust my eyes to the low light I look over the trinket but dare not to reach out for it, don't want to alarm the old man at the moment.

“Yes,” The man resumed, “This is one of my prized purchases. So, as you can tell I have a keen eye for quality. Your uncle was a man of collections, and of course his curiosities are one of a kind, but I’d wager you couldn’t find a dealer with better offers than I.”

“My dear sir, though my uncle was a rather rabid, avid collector of goods. I do not come to you on the night of Christmas Eve to sell, and I appreciate you showing me your best goods to entice me in promoting my father's goods. No, sir,” I take a step back. “There is someone of which I do wish to see happy. Of which I wish to make them ecstatic. Have you not heard of my twin’s melancholic disposition? Trinkets do not interest me, as I must give them something extraordinary at tomorrow's dinner.”

“This is not?”

“Yes, it is a good piece. Nonetheless I wish to peruse the goods you loathe to sell.”

“I do no sell the goods I loathe to sell, madam,” His continence changes. “I could be doing the books and getting the shop ready for closure. To allow myself a moment of respite before the holiday. Not to dawdle around. By the by it is odd for a woman, though independently-minded as the rumor goes; to purchase such rare trinkets alone. Aye, unless you are buying for yourself. Make a proper lady of yourself, this I can promote.”

“You must understand,” I follow him towards the wooden counter set with an old cash register upon it. “How you ever seen someone you hold so dear in such a state? Surely you must have. A trinket, a bauble, tis all I know to give her.”

He sighs and pushes the tiny spectacles up the bridge of his nose. With a bit of a glare he said, “Either have or haven't. It doesn't matter to you. Yet, I do not argue. A customer is a customer.”

“I am just wishing to make a bit of small talk. Life is too short and insecure to always be on edge. What you put in is what you get.”

The old man groans, “I have one more thing to say to you.”

“What is it?”

“Either buy something or get out!” His voice resonates within the small shop. "Not a circle of women with minds so loose to waste time in idle chatter." 

“Very well, good sir,” My tone is low. “To business then. Show me another one of your baubles, if you will.”

The man seems to wait for several moments, sizing up the situation. An old clock ticks many times as the two of us share a look. As he stoops down under the counter with his thinning brown hair falling over his eyes. I step a little nearer and move my hand into the pocket of my pea coat. He draws himself back up and fills his lungs with cold winter air. At the same time many emotions seem to play across his face – fear, horror, and a resolve; a physical repulsion comes over him for he knows that I am a woman buying baubles not for myself, but for someone else; an oddity that he would surely be known for. Through a haggard face his craggy, yellow-stained teeth show through.

“This may be more to your liking. Perhaps it may suit...them,” the dealer observes; and then as he begins to re-arise fully his face still down turned, I jump over the counter. Pulling out the long stiletto dagger from my coat it flashes within the low light, and he is stunned. Struggling like a farm animal to the slaughter, I drive the cold steel into the man's back repeatedly. Causing him to fall and hit his head upon the inside of the counter, and then tumbles to the floor in an unmoving, bloody heap.

Sitting upon the man as I lose myself to my own savagery. I keep driving the blade over and over into his back, spine, kidneys, head, neck, legs, everywhere I could. Blood splashing upon me, but it doesn't matter at all. As my heart quickens; my lungs contract and expand at a rate that I can hardly keep up with. Standing up I wipe my blade off upon an unstained part of the shopkeeper’s shirt.

Taking in the scene for a moment as seemingly unending amount of clocks tick by tock by tick by. Slow, stately, somber almost as if the clocks knew what their faces just witnessed. What brings me back to my senses and from my thoughts is the sound of footsteps from outside. Heavy foot falls running closer and closer as a panic overtakes me. Looking about me whilst a candle upon the counter burns, it's flame wagging about in the draft; and because of this inconsiderable movement, the entire shop feels as if it was filled with a noiseless bustle. An ocean heaving up and down; the tall shadows nodding with it. Gross, obscene shadows dancing upon the walls and decorations. The door leading outside cracked just enough for someone to peer into the shadow-bounded room. An unnerving thought to be sure.

Looking down at the body which is both hunched over and sprawled. Lying in a pool of blood ever widening. Incredibly it is somehow small and meaner than in life. Their poor, miserly clothes in such an ungainly and unattractive manner, his body lies like a cord of wood ready for the carpenter's saw. And yet, as I gaze upon it this bundle of clothes, gore, and blood finds almost an eloquent voice. There it had to lie; there was nothing inside to work the hinges of the bones or to direct locomotion; to lie there until it was found.

Found? Aye, what if it was? Then what would I do? Then what would become of me? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry to ring all across England, and fill my ears, my heart, my soul with echoes of pursuit. Aye, dead or not this corpse was still the enemy; my mortal enemy

“Time, was that when the blood spilled upon the floor,” I thought to myself; and the first word got stuck into my brain, my mouth. Time, now that the deed was done – time, which had come to a close for the poor body, had become instantaneous, momentous, and truly engrossing for me.

I couldn't let the thought leave my mind, when there was first one and then another; with every variety I could think of, of pace and voice – one that was as deep as the bell from a cathedral turret; another ringing on its treble notes – the prelude of a death waltz that I inherently know the steps of – the clocks began to strike the hour of six in the evening.

A sudden outbreak of so many thoughts in this ignorant chamber which I staggered around. Bestirring myself, going to and fro with the candle; jumping at moving shadows; startled to my very soul by a chance reflection. So many richly-adorned mirrors, some of home design, some from Venice or Antwerp, I saw myself repeated, repeated, as it were an army of spies; my own eyes meeting and detecting myself; and the sound of my own steps; despite as light as they fell; would vex the surrounding quiet. And still, as I continue to fill my pockets my thoughts accuse me with more and more sickening iterations, of the thousand faults of my own design. I should have chosen a quieter hour as pedestrians still walk the streets. I should have prepared an alibi; I should not have used a dagger; I should have used more caution, and only bound and gagged the man, not killed him; I should have been less bold, such poignant regrets, so weary, incessant toiling of the mind to want to change what is now unchangeable, to plan what was is always useless, to be the architect of an irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all of this, brute terrors, like the scurrying of vermin, rats, and mice in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of my brain with riot; the hand of the police would fall heavy upon my shoulder, and my nerves would jerk like a fish on a hook; or I beheld, in a galloping defiling, the holding, the prison, the gallows, and the grave; where I shall await the judgment.

Terror of people that still inhabit the streets sat down within my mind like an army ready for the siege. I can't help but think that it was impossible, but somehow some rumor of the death must have already reached their ears and set on edge their morbid curiosity; and now, in all the neighborhoods and districts around, I picture them sitting motionless and with attentive ear – solitary people who are condemned to spend Christmas dwelling, and thinking, alone on the memories of their past, and now they recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raise finger: each degree, age, and humor, but all, by their own hearths, prying and weaving the rope that will hang me. There are moments it seems I couldn't move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian steins rang out like a bell; and alarmed by the sudden bigness of the ticking, I am tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of my internal terrors, the very silence of the shop appeared to be its own source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze anyone who may be passing by; and I figured I should step more boldly, to move and bustle aloud among the various contents of the shop, in imitation, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy woman at ease in her own shop.

But now I am so pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of my mind was still alert with the cunning and wit that I need, another crept towards the brink of lunacy, insanity, and madness. One very specific hallucination in particular took a strong hold upon my ego. The nosy wife and child with white face beside the window; the passerby stopped by a horrible instinct on the cobblestone – these could at worst suspect something horrendous, they could not truly know; through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sound could penetrate. But here, within the shop and house, am I actually alone? I know I am; I had watched the maid set forth, in her best despite being poor, “out for the evening,” written in every ribbon she wore and the smile that she had adorned. Yes, I am alone, of course I am; and yet, in the bulk of the empty living space above me, I could surely hear a stir of delicate footing – I am surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some presence. Indeed, surely; to every room and corner of this place my imagination follows it; and now it is a faceless, body-less thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again, it was a shadow of myself; and yet again I am beholden to the image of the dead man, inspired once again with cunning and hatred.

During times, with strong effort, I glance at the partly open door which still seems to repel my eyes. The building is tall, the skylight small and dirty from the years, the lights outside blinded almost with the fogginess, and showed dimly onto the threshold of the shop itself. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, was there not hanging wavering a shadow?

Suddenly, from the street outside, a happy, joyful woman begun to beat upon the shop's window, accompanying her blows with shouts and words upon which the dealer was called upon by name. I, turning into ice, glancing at the dead man. But no! He is laying quite still; he is far fled from beyond earshot of this woman and her shouting; he has sunk beneath the realm of the living; and his name, which would once have caught his notice above the howling of the blizzard, had become empty. After a moment she desists and departs, yet it does everything but set my mind at ease. 

This is the biggest hint that I must hurry with what remains to be done, to get done and flee from this accusing neighborhood, to plunge into a back of London's various multitude, and to reach, on the opposite side of my day, that supposed haven of safety and apparent tranquility and innocence – my bed. One visitor had come: at any moment another may follow and be more obstinate. I have done the deed, and yet not a profit has been reaped, would be too abhorrent a failure if I didn't. The money, that is now my concern; and as a means to that, the keys.

I glance over my shoulder at the door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet I feel the butterflies in my belly, I draw near the body of my victim. The human characterizations have disappeared. A human suit half-stuffed with hay, the limbs lay scattered about, the torso doubled on the floor; and yet the thing repels me. Although dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, I fear that it might have more of a significance to the touch. As if it is real until then. Taking the body by the shoulders, I turn it on its back. It was a strange feeling – light and supple, and the limbs, as if they have been broken in so many pieces, fall into the oddest postures. The face, once alive and sneering, was robbed of all its expressions; but it is as pale as fresh wax and smeared with blood. That is the one displeasing circumstance. Carrying me back, upon this very instant, to a certain day in the town I grew up in: a gray day, a piping cold wind, a crowd upon the street, and the blaring of music; and a girl with her identical twin going to and fro, completely buried in the crowd and divided between dual interest and fear, until, coming out upon the concourse, we found a booth and we spot a great screen with pictures, awful in its design, garish in its color. Landscapes of places I'll never see; the Windsors with their murdered guest; religious iconography and scenes; and several of famous and infamous people. All gruesome depictions; burned in my head like a brand.

As clear as an illusion; I am once again that little girl; I was looking the pictures over once more with Sara by my side, and with the same sense of revolt I feel deep inside, at these vile, awful pictures; I can't help but still feel stunned by the situation. A bar of the music I heard that day returns to my memory, and at that, for the first time, an illness overcomes me, a sudden weakness of my joints, a sick breath of nausea threatens forth, I instantly resist it and push it back down.

I judge it more than prudent to confront than to flee from all these considerations; looking with a renewed interest in the dead face, bending my mind to the realization of the nature and greatness of my crime. Such a little while ago his face was moving with every change of his sentiment and mood; those pale lips had spoken, that body was on fire with energies governable by the mind; and now, and by my hand, that piece of life, that piece of existence, was arrested like an old horologist, with interjected finger, arresting the beating of the clock. I reason with myself but in vain; I couldn't ride to more remorseful consciousness; the same heart of mine had shuddered before this blood-painted effigy of my crime, looked on in its reality non-moving, ceasing. At best, I could feel a small gleam of pity for the one endowed, once again in vain, with these faculties that make the world an enchanted place, one who had never really loved and lived and who was now dead. Penitence itself? No, not a single tremor of that in my heart or soul.

With this I shake myself clear of any thoughts, finding the keys I advance towards the door of the shop. Outside, the intensity and ferocity of the snow has increased, and the sound of the wind howling banishes the silence, unusual for London. Like some ancient ruin, the rooms of the building are suddenly haunted by an incessant sound, which fills the ear and whirls with the ticking of the clocks in its own danse macabre. And, as I approached the door, I seem to pick up, as if in answer to my own cautious footfalls, the steps of another pair of feet scurrying up the stairs. Shadows still wavering rather loosely upon the old threshold. I take the ton of weight that my resolve has created upon my movements and open the door.

Lamp light, faint and foggy, glimmer dimly in the snow and upon the bare floor, on the bright suit of armor posted in the corner, halberd in one hand and sword in another, stands judging, and on the dark wood carvings of the stairs, and framed pictures that hang against the old wooden panels on the wainscot. So loud is the howling of the wind through all of the building that, in my own ears, it began to be distinguished into many other sounds. Footsteps and sighs of unseen breaths, the fast trod and treading of regiments marching in the distance beyond the eye, the clinking of money in the counting, the creaking of several doors lain in a stealthy ajar, appeared to mingle with the bellowing of the wind upon the roof and the beating of the snow against the windows, all unusual weather on this unusual Christmas Eve. The sense that I am not alone grows more and more upon me getting my mind to the very verge of pure madness. With every side of me seeming to be haunted and beset by some varying presences. I know I heard them moving in the upper rooms; from down within the shop itself, I hear the dead man getting up to his feet, and I push forward and begun with great effort to mount the stairs, footsteps fleeing quietly before and behind me like a thief in stealth. If I were but deaf I can't help but think how much tranquility my soul would possess. Then again, and attentive with fresh ears, I can't help but feel blessed that my unresting senses hold outpost and stand as sentinel for me. My head turns continually upon my neck; my eyes, which seem to start from their orbits, scouting on every side, and on every glance, I was half-rewarded, as it were, with the tail of something namelessly vanishing out of sight, just out of view. The four plus ten steps to the second floor were four plus ten agonies that took an eternity to pass.

On that second-floor landing, the doors stand ajar and intriguing, three of them like three deadly ambushes, shaking my nerves like the roaring of thousands of guns. I could never again, I feel, be sufficiently hidden and fortified from my fellow men's observing eyes, I long to be home and away from here, girded by the walls of my house, buried among my blankets and sheets, and invisible to all. And at this thought I wonder a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly, supernatural avengers. It is not so with myself. I fear the laws of nature, lest, in their infinite callousness and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of my horrible crime. I fear this tenfold more, with a slavish, and almost superstitious terror, some severing of the continuity of man's experience in this life, some willful illegality of nature to slay another life. A game of skill I entered, depending on the rules of nature, calculating consequence from cause, and what if nature, as the defeated ruler and tyrant overthrows the chessboard, should break the mold of their succession, and allow death? The like had befallen Napoleon, or so they say, when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall myself, the walls somehow becoming transparent and revealing my evil doings, like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under my feet like quicksand from the stories and detain me in their clutch, yes, and there were soberer accidents that very well may destroy myself: if, for instance, the building should collapse and imprison me beside the body of my victim; or the building next door should go up in flames and the firemen invade from all sides. These things I more than feared, I dreaded; and, in a sense, these things might be called the acts of nature reaching forth against the violation of her most sacred of laws.

When I find myself safe in the old drawing room, and shutting the door behind, I am fully aware of my respite from any alarms. This dusty room is quite in disarray, uncarpeted, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great opera-glasses, in which I can't hope but behold myself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing; with their faces to the wall; a fine Norman sideboard, a cabinet of curious from around the globe, and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings of various colors and materials. The window is cracked, but by a great good fortune the shutters had been closed; and this conceals me from the neighbors' prying eyes.

Here, then, I move an ancient-looking packing case before the cabinet and began to search among the keys within. It is a long business, for there are many; and it is more than irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time is of the essence. But the closeness of the doings sobers my thoughts. With the sides of my vision I watch the door – glancing at it from time to time directly, like a defender pleased to verify the good estate of my own defenses. But in truth I have to say I am at peace. The wind howling against the building and the snow gusting about the street sounds so natural and pleasant; despite the unusual conditions for London. On the other side of the room, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of an old hymn, and the voices of many children took up to the air and words that I cannot decipher. How somber, almost comfortable melody if I was religious. I listen to the melody, startled but perhaps it was in my own mind? Shaking my head, I sort through the keys, and my thoughts are thronged with ideas and images; church-going children and the deepness of the high organ; children afield, swimmers by the riverside, ramblers on the commons, kite-fliers with the wind and navigate the cloud-ridden sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to a church I've never been to. A religion I never followed nor was I forced to by my parents. What is this oddity? Why is it here? Does it mean something?

And as I sat thus at once busy and absent from this world, I am startled to my feet. A flash of ice through my veins, a flash of fire through my nerves, a bursting gush of fear within my blood, washes over me, and then I become like marble standing transfixed and scared; never moving from this infernal moment. A step mounted the stairs slowly, steadily, and presently a hand is laid upon the knob, rattling a moment, and the lock clicks, and the door opens.

Fear holds me in its thrall. What to expect, I do not know, whether the dead man walking, or the officials of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in. I consign myself to the gallows but then a face was thrust into the aperture, a sharply defined feminine face. With a jawline the kind that could cut diamonds, brown eyes a bit larger than my own, a pert nose with matching pert ears. Brown hair cut just short of the middle of their neck, looks around the room, glancing about before looking at me, nodding and smiling as if in a friendly recognition, and I do recognize the face as my twin, but it isn’t her at all, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind her, my fear breaks loose from all of my control in a hoarse, husky cry. At the sound the visitor returns.

“Did you call me?” She asks with a slight lisp, and with that she enters into the room and the door closes behind her.

I stand and gaze at her with morbid curiosity and fear. Perhaps there was something messing with my sight, some type of hallucination, but the outlines of my twin’s imposter seem to change and waver, like a shadow quivering in the candlelight of the shop; and somehow I can't help but think this woman isn’t as such, and like a lump of living terror, there lay in my chest the conviction that this person was neither of earth or space. Dressed in a fine black suit, pressed and tailored to this woman's body. Platinum and gold cuff links, a black shirt underneath the jacket along with matching tie.

And yet this woman had a strange air of the commonplace, as she stood looking at me with a smile, and when she added, “You are looking for the money, are you not?” It was in the tone of everyday politeness.

I cannot force words to answer.

“I should warn you, however,” She resumed. “That the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Miss Tegan Quin be found in this place, I need not describe to her the consequences. Not anything one would wish upon themselves.”

“You know me?” I cry out, of course she does. She has taken on the visage of my twin.

The visitor smiles. “You have long been a favorite mine,” She replied, “And I have long observed and often sought to help you. This time more overtly.”

“What are you?” I ask.

“What I may be,” Returned her, “Cannot affect the service I propose to render upon you.”

“It most certainly can,” I exclaim, “It does! Be helped by you? No, never, not by you! You do not know me, no one knows me here! You do not know me! Do you know what I have done?”

“Oh, I know you, and what have you done? Some poor miser, no concern of mine,” Replied the visitor, with a sort of kind severity, the rather firmness of a grandfather. “I know you to your very soul, Tegan.”

“Know me!” I cried out once more. “Who can do so? My life is naught but travesty and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my base nature. All humans do, all humans are better than this disguise that grows and stifles about them, or so they think, perhaps. You see each get dragged away by life, like one whom bravado has seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control – could you even see their faces, they would be altogether different; they would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse is known only to whatever God there may be and myself. But, had I any time, I could disclose my true self.”

“To me?” Inquires the woman.

“To you before all,” I returned. “I figured you an intelligent person. I thought – since you exist – you could prove a reader of the heart, then. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it, my acts! I was born and have lived in a land of giants; giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother's womb – the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never has it been blurred by any willful sophisticated acts, although it is too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common in humanity – the unwilling, must do what she has to, sinner?”

“All this is very heartfelt,” Was the reply, “But it regards me not. These points are beyond my province, and I care not in the least by what compulsions you may or may not have. Being dragged away. So, as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies when one is having fun; the servant delays; looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the billboards, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as if the gallows itself was walking towards you through the Christmas streets! Shall I help you; I, who knows all? Shall I tell you where the money is?”

“What is the price?” I asked.

“A Christmas gift,” Returned the other.

I can't help but refrain from smiling with a bit of a bitter triumph. “No,” said I, “I will take nothing. If I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips. Perhaps I would have the courage to refuse. It may be a bit credulous, but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil.”

“I have no objection to a deathbed repentance if you do accept,” She observed.

“You don't believe in their worth?” I asked.

“Not what I said,” Returned this other, “But I look on these things differently, and when the life is done my interest fails. Many men have lived to serve me, to spread black looks under color of religion, or to sow salt in the fields of wheat, as you do, in a course of weakness one can find compliance with desire. Now that she draws so near to her deliverance, she can add but just one act of service – to repent, to die smiling, and builds up their confidence and hope the more timid of my followers. I am not so hard a master, ya know? Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in life as have done hitherto; please yourself more amply with your desires, spread your elbows on the table; and when the night begins to truly fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, just for your comfort, that you will find it even easier to compound your argument with your conscience, and to make a type of peace with God. I came but now from such a deathbed, and the room was full of the most sincere mourners, listening to the poor sod's last words: and when I looked into that face, which had been set as a striking flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope.”

“Do you suppose me such a creature?” I replied. “Do you think I don't have grander dreams than to sin, and sin, and, at the last moment, perhaps sneak into heaven? My heart can't help rise at the thought. Is this, then, your experience of humankind? Or is it because you find me with red hands that you presume to know of such baseness? And is this crime of murder indeed profane as to dry up whatever springs of good I may have within?”

She scoffed with a dismissive gesture, “Murder is no special category to me. All sins are murder, they would have you believe, even if all life is war. I have watched your race, you live like a starving sailor on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each other’s lives like so much parasites. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting, I find in all that the last, best, consequence is death; and to my eyes and ears, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking some type of grace on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore a base murderer as yourself. Do I say that I only follow sins? Absurd! I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a hair, they are scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which you know I live for, consists not in action but in character. The bad types are quite dear to me; not the bad act, whore's fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling cosmos of the ages, might yet be found to be actually blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed some miser, but because you are Tegan, that I offer to forward your escape.”

“I will lay open my heart, though I am sure you think you know it,” I answered. “This crime was to be my last. On my way to it I have learned quite a few lessons; this itself a lesson, a momentous one at that. Tonight, I have been driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a slave to my poverty, driven and scourged by it for years. These are robust virtues, are they not? That can stand in these temptations; mine are not so, I suppose. I had a thirst of pleasure, perhaps I still do. But today, and from this deed, I pluck both warning and riches – both the power and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor upon the stage. I see myself all changed, hands the agents of good, the heart at peace. Something has come over me out of the past; something of what one dreams upon on the evening to the sound of one's breathing, of what I predict when I shed tears over a book, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my life, I have wandered within, but now I see once more my destination.”

“You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange,” She remarked, “And there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some thousands. You have had wealth before. This shan't change you.”

“Ah,” said I, “But this time I have a sure thing.”

“You will lose again,” Replied the visitor under her voice.

“What do you know? Even if I do I get back half!” I said.

“You will also lose that,” Said the other.

Sweat starts upon my brow. “Well, what matters?” I exclaimed. “Say it be lost! Say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that is the worse, continue until the end until it overrides the better? Evil and good run strong in me, as in most, tugging me both ways. I do not love one side, I love all sides. I can conceive great deeds, and the deeds that led to such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to me. I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than me? I pity them. I prize love, though, I love honest laughter; there is no good and pure thing on this earth anymore, but I will be lying if I said I didn't love it from my heart. Are my vices only to direct my life, and any virtues nothing of effect, like some passive drudge upon the mind? Not so good, also, is my spring of actions.”

But the visitor raises her finger. “For six and thirty years that you have existed,” Said she, “Through many ups and downs of fortune and varieties of humor, I have watched you fall. Fifteen years ago, you would have started with theft; the contemplation of murder wouldn't have had crossed your thoughts. Three years back you would have blanched, vomited at the idea of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you will still physically and mentally recoil at? Five years from now I shall detect that fact! Downward, ever so downward, lies your path; nor will anything but death stop it. Except I.”

“True,” I said with a low, husky tone, “I have complied with evil, but it is so with all: the very saints themselves, in the mere exercise of living, grow less, and take on the tone of their surroundings.”

“I will propose one simple question,” She said taking a step towards me, “And as you answer, I shall read to you a moral horoscope then. Many things you have grown most lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all. But granting that, are you in any particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your very own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein on it all?”

“I anyone?” I repeat, with a hint of anguish of pure consideration. “Yes,” I added, with despair, “I have gone down in all.”

“Then,” the visitor smiled making her quite beautiful to behold, an odd sentiment considering she looks like my twin, even if an air of insidiousness surrounded her, “you no longer must content yourself with what you are or will have been. From this moment forward you shall answer to me, but I will also reward you in ways you always have wanted. Any one you could ever desire; any amount of money your heart dreams up; any debauched, tormented evil or vice your brain could dream up. I will be there to serve you. Just you must serve me in turn, lest you feel my full wrath.”

“You speak of wrath like it concerns I, as if I haven't been through my own personal hell. As have most during their time always have I wondered what worse could you make it? Having the threat of eternal damnation, concern me it doesn't,” I said.

She scoffs and laughs for a moment, “Content yourself on that thought; rest well thinking my wrath is nothing.”

We are silent for a moment that seems to go on endlessly. Somehow the ticking of the clocks downstairs has made its way up here.

“What about your Christmas Gift?” I eventually break the silence.

She stops for a moment and beckons me with her finger, “Follow me. There's a need for a covenant; a bit of your word, even those who know evil deep down, must offer their word. A gentleman's agreement, as they say. I locked up, to impede her, yet she'll get in.”

Once downstairs the candles have burnt down to nubs and it casts an eerie glow about the furniture, baubles, clocks, and mirrors within. A sudden realization comes over me as I hear a key placed into the doorknob as someone struggles to open it.

“The maid!” I exclaim.

“You know what to do,” the visitor whispers in my ear, causing the hair on the back of my neck to rise. “Think of it as signing a contract, I am sure you are used to such things. Being upon the Stock Exchange.”

Standing to the side of the door it seems as if the poor, happy maid is unaware of me; struggling to open the door. I cannot help but think that this isn't some kind of cruel providence; yet that is what it is, a type of providence for me but not this woman. As the small bell attached to the top of the door frame rings. I grip my dagger tightly knowing full well what is coming up. The maid walks into the dark a surprised look on her face, but none the more surprised when I take a hold of her. In the low light the blade gleams before it is thrust down into the side of her neck. Gurgling like an overfed drain, I spend far too much time; every moment the click ticks as I force the blade through her entire neck. A rush runs through me this time; nary a doubt in my head, my heart, or what is left of my soul.

“Good,” the visitor walks up beside me. “My favorite Christmas gift.”


End file.
